Yurui The Cursed One

The door opens.

Every head turns.

Kika stands there with a hall pass in one hand and an apology plastered across her face. Her uniform is immaculate. Hair ribbons level. If not for the soft flush dusting her cheeks, no one would have guessed she’d arrived in haste. She slips the door shut behind her with almost exaggerated care, like she wants everyone to see just how sorry she is for the interruption.

Maevis looks up from the board. Chalk between her fingers. The room’s reflected in her glossy eyes: rows of fancy-dressed students, the white square of the windows staring at the doorway.

“Kika,” she says calmly, voice cold as ice, “Your pass allowed you five minutes. Not twenty.”

“Sorry, Miss Maevis.” Kika gives a small, awkward laugh. “I know. I was coming back when I ran into Yurui upstairs. She didn’t look too well.”

That lands softly enough that two girls in the second row actually frown at me with some semblance of concern.

Maevis gaze shifts to me. “Didn't look too well, huh.” She repeats with a neutral look on her face.

Kika nods, looking miserable on my behalf, as if she’s taken my discomfort upon herself. “I saw her in the second-floor restroom. I think she panicked. She said she couldn’t come in like this.”

I’m staring straight at her like some idiot, mouth wide agape.

“That’s not what happened,” I protest loudly.

No one speaks a word. Everyone stares back at me with those judgmental looks I'm all too familiar with by now. In the span of a second, the classroom turns into the courtroom.

Kika turns to me with a startled little blink. “You told me you didn’t have the assignment ready. You said you’d rather wait until the bell than walk in empty-handed.”

“I said no such thing,” I snap. Desperation ringing in my voice.

“You were crying, I thought someone should stay with you just in case.”

In a moment of blind panic, I get up and make my way to the front. By the time I'm halfway there, I already regret it. But it would be way too awkward if I were to turn back now, so I have no choice but to keep walking.

Yashiro, third seat from the front, leans back in her chair, settling in for the show. The boy beside her looks away, then looks back when he realizes no one else has the decency to do the same. Near the windows, Kamila subtly raises her phone, ready to capture whatever drama comes of this.

I stop right in front of the teacher and proclaim loudly:

"She's lying!"

The look of amusement on Sophia's and Sophie's faces makes my heart sink. Yashiro is looking oddly satisfied, and even Kika doesn't bother hiding her smirk.

Maevis sets the chalk down.

“So, Yurui, do you have the assignment?”

I stare at her.

Maevis does not challenge Kika. She does not ask for proof. She does not even look surprised. She only turns her attention to me, as if my reaction is the real offense.

“Who cares about the assignment?” I say angrily. “She’s lying. That’s the point.”

“The point,” Maevis says, “is that you were asked a question.”

“A question that has nothing to do with whether she’s lying.”

“No,” Maevis says evenly. “It has everything to do with determining which one of you is telling the truth.”

She doesn’t raise her voice. And yet I feel like I’ve just been barked at by a drill sergeant.

“So, do you have it?”

A knot forms in my chest.

Because I don’t have it. Of course I don’t. The pages are outside under the bush, soaked through with trash water, and buried with the rest of my things. Somewhere in all the chaos, homework had completely slipped out of my mind. Not that it would matter anyway. Handing Maevis a stack of ruined, filthy papers might have been worse than handing her nothing at all.

And this wasn’t even the first time Yashiro’s little clique had cost me an assignment, or the first time I had ended up on Maevis’s bad side because of it. Just three weeks ago, I got cornered by them in a bathroom.

Sophie pinched her nose between two manicured fingers.

“Eww. It stinks in here.”

It was a high school bathroom. What had she expected? A flower garden? Lavender mist? A string quartet? I thought to myself bitterly, but didn't dare to say it aloud.

Three girls crowded me toward the corner between the last stall and the tiled wall. The bathroom smelled like bleach, rusted pipes, and wet paper towels. I tried not to notice how much my own fear seemed to sour the air. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, turning everyone’s skin a little sickly. Every tile reflected a broken version of me: hunched shoulders, clenched hands, eyes desperately searching for an exit that did not exist.

Kamila was missing. Figures. Probably tangled up in another screaming match with her boyfriend, or sobbing in some stairwell, or doing whatever it was girls like her did when they weren’t busy ruining lives.

Yashiro tilted her head, studying me as if I were a dirty stain on her perfect little world.

“Honestly, you’d think someone would have taught you some basic hygiene by now.”

My stomach dropped. There were many ways a situation could go wrong. At this point, I knew all the telltale signs by heart: a change in tone, a small smile, the way someone blocked the door before they asked a question. This one had all of them.

I get very nervous sensing the direction in which the conversation is going, I lunge forward and dart toward the narrow gap between Sophia and the bathroom stall.

No dice.

Sophia’s foot drove into my stomach, hard enough to fold me in half. The air burst out of me in a wet gasp. I hit the tiles on my side and skidded into the corner, my shoulder cracking against the wall. A sharp burst of pain washed through my entire body. Sophia pressed her shiny designer leather shoe against me, pinning me in place.

"Don't move," she said to me, looking very annoyed.

“Stay,” Yashiro reiterated, like she was speaking to a dog.

She crouched in front of me. Yashiro moved with the slow confidence of someone who already knew how this would end. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to.

“Remember what we talked about in history class the other day?” She says quietly, calm as still water.

I remembered. I shook my head anyway. Anything to steer this conversation somewhere else. Anywhere else.

“I wouldn’t expect anything more from you.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You poors have a certain way of going about life.”

She said poors the way someone might say cockroach.

“It’s actually been fascinating to observe you since you transferred here,” she continued. “I’d never seen one of you in the wild before. It’s like visiting a zoo.”

Oh, fuck. I see it happen in real time- her face illuminating with that wide, stretched-out, evil-looking smile. The kind that doesn't belong on a human face. It reminds me of a disturbed child crouched over some small and helpless animal, merciless eyes bright with curiosity.

I suppose that's exactly what I am to her. The animal. Hers to prod, to wound, to discard without an ounce of consequence. My fists tightened until my nails dug crescents into my palms.

Don’t move. Don’t answer. Don’t give them anything.

That was the rule I had made for myself after the first week of transferring to this school. I have no idea if it worked, but for better or worse, I've stuck with it for all this time.

“Right,” Yashiro said. “The lesson. Disease. Epidemics. The filth that haunted the ancient world.”

Her smile returned.

“You remember now, don’t you?”

Silence thickened around us. The faucet at the far end of the room dripped once, twice, each drop a note too loud.

Sophia’s shoe pressed harder into my ribs. Sophie lounged against the wall behind her, eyes bright with excitement. And Yashiro stayed crouched in front of me, chin resting neatly in her hands, that long, sinister smile stretching across her face, making her look less like a girl and more like a demon wearing human skin.

“If you had paid any attention in class,” she said, “you would know that people like you caused half the suffering in history.”

“That’s not—”

I opened my mouth, but her gaze made me shut it down immediately. Yashiro’s eyes sharpened. She leaned closer, close enough that I could see the gloss on her lips, the perfect calm of her expression.

“All people had to do was wash,” she said softly. “A simple shower. A little soap. Imagine how many millions might have been saved if poors like you could follow basic hygiene rules.”

Her smile vanished, leaving behind her usual emptiness.

“You wouldn’t want to start a plague in here just to get back at us, would you?”

I shook my head so quickly my vision blurred.

Sophie gasped, theatrical and delighted. “You don’t think she’s doing it on purpose?”

Sophia smirked. “Who knows?” She bent down enough to look me in the eye.

“Well? Are you?”

I shook my head again. Yashiro’s face changed. Only a little. A slight lift in her brows. A glimmer in her eyes.

Excitement.

No. No, no, no.

“Then,” she said, “you won’t object to us teaching you some basic hygiene, right?”

The room seemed to tilt. She looked over her shoulder at the others.

“We wouldn’t want a plague spreading into the nice part of town.”

Sophie giggled. Sophia’s grin widened.

Yashiro rose and glanced around the bathroom, her eyes traveling over the stalls, the dented hand dryers, the long trough sink set beneath a row of narrow mirrors.

“I was going to suggest a shower,” she said, “but this school wasn’t built to accommodate someone like you. I suppose they expect basic cleanliness from students here.”

There were so many things I wanted to say. That I showered every day. That my uniform was clean. That she didn’t know anything about me. That I hated her.

None of it came out. My body had become something alien to me, small and shaking in the corner, as useless as a frightened puppy. Then Yashiro’s gaze drifted past me, toward the long porcelain sink beneath the row of mirrors opposite the stalls. Something shifted behind her eyes.

My heart began to hammer as she turned back to Sophie and Sophia.

“Since showering isn’t an option,” she said, “how about we bathe her instead?”

For one second, the whole world stopped. Bathe me?

Sophie’s face lit up. Sophia looked as if someone had handed her a present.

“Absolutely,” Sophie said, excitement brimming in her voice.

Sophia pressed her shoe down harder. Pain flashed through my side, and tears sprang to my eyes.

“You heard her,” she said. “Come on. Dress down.”

I froze. It took me a moment to understand what she meant. When I did, I almost wished I hadn’t. My body went cold from the inside out.

Sophia did not wait for me to obey. She grabbed the front of my blouse and yanked upward.

Something in me snapped. I screamed, the sound ripping out of me raw and feral, tearing my throat open. I lunged without thinking, clawing at whatever was closest. My nails caught skin. Sophia shrieked. The bathroom exploded into movement.

“STOP.”

One word, and my rampage comes to a sudden halt.

Yashiro’s blessing at work.

My body obeyed before my mind registered what it was doing. I froze half-crouched on the tiles, breath scraping in and out of me, hands curled like claws, shaking from the adrenaline and all the pent-up emotions.

Sophia was on the floor, one hand pressed to her cheek. Thin red lines marked her face where my nails had caught her. She cursed under her breath, over and over, like that was the only language she knew.

Sophie stepped forward, watching me with a smile that made my skin crawl.

“If she won’t dress down willingly,” she said, “we can do it for her. We’ll even do her a favor and throw out her dirty clothes after.”

She tilted her head.

“Wouldn’t want to put filthy clothes on a freshly bathed person.”

All the anger drained out of me at once. Fear rushed in to fill the space. Not ordinary fear. Pure dread spread through my whole body.

Yashiro seemed lost in thought.

“Mmm. No need to go that far.”

I stared at her, barely breathing.

“If she wants to bathe with all her things on, let her. We might as well wash her clothes while we’re at it.”

Sophia climbed to her feet. The smile she gave me made me want to disappear from my own body. She grabbed my arm and hauled me up.

“Come on,” she snapped at the others. “Help me out, would you? She’s heavier than she looks.”

Sophie wrinkled her nose. “God, what do they feed people like her? Concrete?”

They laughed as they dragged me across the bathroom. My shoes squeaked against the wet tile. My knees knocked into the cabinet beneath the sink. Someone’s fingers dug into my upper arm hard enough to bruise. I tried to plant my feet, but fear had rendered my legs soft and useless.

They shoved me onto the counter. My hip struck the edge with a dull crack of pain.

“Phew, it was like hauling a sack of potatoes,” Sophia said, wiping droplets of sweat from her forehead. She leaned close, her scratched cheek already swelling. “You'd better thank us later. I don’t work this hard for my own siblings, let alone some slum scum.”

I did not answer. I could not.

Maybe from the outside, I looked calm, to the point where I looked stupid. But inside, it was pure chaos. My thoughts had shattered into dozens of loose pieces, all of them colliding at once.

They spoke around me. Their voices blurred. I heard laughter, the scrape of shoes, the squeal of the faucet handle turning.

Then hands were on me again. They lifted me, shoved me, and folded me awkwardly into the lengthy trough sink. It was too small for a person. My stomach pressed against cold porcelain. My shoulders jammed against the sides. My legs dangled over the edge, useless and limp.

A faucet coughed. A rush of ice-cold water hit my back, stealing the breath from my lungs.

I gasped so hard it hurt. My body seized. The cold punched through my blouse, through my skin, straight into my bones.

“Oops,” Sophia murmured.

The faucet jerked. Then the water turned burning hot, hitting my neck first. Pain flared so suddenly I screamed.

Yashiro leaned over me. Her face filled my vision, pale and calm beneath the flickering light.

“Shut up.”

My voice died. Just like that. My mouth stayed open, but nothing came out. No scream. No word. Not even a breath loud enough to be heard.

I stared at her, trapped under the sound of running water. Until that moment, I had not understood how frightening silence could be. Pain was one thing. Humiliation was another. But losing my voice in the middle of it made me feel completely helpless. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. My own body had become an inescapable torture chamber.

All I could do was stare. And stare I did, right at Yashiro's face. I hated that for some strange, fucked-up reason it felt familiar. Worse, I hated that the familiarity almost felt warm. Not comforting exactly, but soothing. In the middle of everything falling apart, familiarity felt close enough to comfort that my mind latched onto it. It was as if my brain had found the one thing in the room it recognized and clung to it, refusing to let go, no matter how terrible it was.

I must have been staring too intently, because Yashiro’s expression flickered. For a heartbeat, something like discomfort crossed her face. Maybe it was the way I was looking at her. The wide puppy eyes, like the animal that was about to be slaughtered.

“Close your eyes,” she said, quieter now.

I obeyed. Darkness consumed me, and a sense of absolute dread overwhelmed me.

The water kept falling. I lay there in complete darkness as scalding hot water poured over me. Heat crawled across my skin. Soap stung wherever it touched scratches and tender places. The pain was indescribable, and all I could do was make small, broken, grunt-like noises low in my throat as I was slowly cooked alive.

The girls giggled somewhere above me. I hated the sound. I clung to it anyway.

Because if I could hear them, then I still had hearing. If I could feel the porcelain biting into my sides, then I still had a body. If I could smell soap, steam, and old bleach, then the world had not vanished completely.

And maybe that was what scared me most. Not the pain. Not even them. The thought that I might disappear inside myself and never find my way back terrified me more than anything else.

The mind is a cowardly thing. It makes bargains with horror.

After some time, the darkness inside my eyelids grew deeper. I could feel myself slipping away until, eventually, I passed out from the pain.

I have no idea how much time had passed, but by the time I came to, the water running over me had gone room temperature- neither cold nor hot, just relentless. My uniform clung to my skin. My hair stuck to my face. Someone’s hands scrubbed soap into my sleeves, my collar, my scalp. The movements were brisk, practical, almost weary.

For one bewildered second, the absence of pain felt almost like a dream. Then I remembered where I was.

I tried to open my mouth and plead for mercy. For some reason, I was almost sure that Yashiro would actually let me go, but...

Please.

The word rose inside me and struck a giant wall. Only a strangled grunt escaped.

“Oh,” Sophie said brightly. “She’s back.”

The water stopped. Sound rushed in to fill the silence: the ticking pipes, the drip from my sleeves, Sophia’s amused breathing.

My vision came back slowly. The three of them stood over me, backlit by fluorescent lights like a tribunal.

Sophia folded her arms. “Well,” she said, “we’ve done all we can. You’d better thank us for our hard work.”

I opened my mouth. A warped, useless sound came out.

Yashiro’s eyes narrowed.

“Show some gratitude,” she said. “Or we start over.”

Panic tore through me.

“Th-thamphs youuu.”

The words collapsed on the way out, thick and broken, barely recognizable.

For a moment, they only stared. Then Sophie burst out laughing. Sophia joined her. Even Yashiro smiled faintly, as if I had performed well enough to entertain her.

They left me there. The door swung shut behind them, and I lay in the sink, soaked and shaking, listening to their footsteps fade down the hall.

Then something inside me broke open.

I don’t remember climbing out. I remember the tiles under my knees. I remember screaming until my throat burned. I remember hitting the mirror with the heel of my hand, again and again, until the glass trembled and my palm went numb. I remember banging my head against the wall just to smother the pain and humiliation before they could swallow me.

Eventually, I slid to the floor and folded myself into the smallest shape I could make. Knees to chest. Arms locked tight. Forehead pressed to wet fabric. I sobbed until my eyes and throat felt raw.

I have no idea how much time has passed since they dragged me in here. It may have been minutes. It may have been an hour. The bathroom had gone quiet. The fluorescent lights still buzzed. Water dripped steadily from the ends of my hair onto the tile.

Then, through the fog in my head, one thought surfaced.

Class.

I had to be in class.

The idea was absurd. I should have been allowed to fall apart. To enjoy a moment of peace. But fear had its own logic, and it was colder than reason. If I missed class, there would be consequences. And I knew that I couldn't take any more today. I was long past my limit of what I could endure anymore, and it would completely break me.

So I stood up. My body moved before I really understood what I was doing.

I walked down the hallway in my soaked uniform, leaving a thin trail of water behind me. My shoes squelched with every step. Soap bubbles clung to my sleeves and collar. My hair dripped into my eyes.

Students turned as I passed. Some stared. Some whispered. Someone laughed behind their hand. The world had lost its sharpness. Everything looked faded, blurry, distant, like I was watching it from somewhere far away.

When I opened the classroom door, every voice stopped. Silence fell so quickly it felt staged. Thirty faces turned toward me.

I must have looked like I had crawled straight out of a river. Drenched. Shivering. Uniform plastered to my body. Foam still gathered along the seams of my jacket.

Miss Maevis looked up from the front of the room. For one second, I thought she would ask. Just one question.

What happened?

Instead, her mouth tightened.

“Yurui,” she said coldly, “you are late. Stop causing a disturbance and sit down.”

A few giggles scattered through the room. Someone pulled their backpack away from the aisle as I passed, as if I might contaminate it.

I did not look at them. I did not look at anyone.

I found a chair and sat.

“Yurui,” Miss Maevis said. “I meant at your desk.”

I looked down. The desk in front of me was not mine.

Probably.

The whole world was still just one giant blur to me. I stood, moved one seat back, and waited.

No correction came.

Relief hit me so suddenly, it knocked all the remaining strength out of me. I collapsed onto the desk and let my forehead rest against my arms.

The rest of the class passed in pieces. Chalk scraping against the board. Turning pages. Laughter bitten short. My damp sleeves dripping onto the floor. The smell of soap rising from me in waves so strong it made me nauseous.

Then Miss Maevis’s shadow fell over my desk.

“Yurui. Your assignment.”

Assignment. Right.

I fumbled for my backpack. The fabric was soaked through. When I pulled it open, my notebooks had swollen into warped bricks. Ink bled everywhere. Loose papers had dissolved into gray pulp.

I stared at the mess for too long. Then, because she was waiting, because the whole class was watching, because my mind was drifting somewhere far away into the clouds, away from this hell, without taking a second to think, I reached in and scooped up a handful of paper mush.

I held it out to her. Water dripped from my wrist.

Miss Maevis stared at my hand as if I were holding a pile of shit. Her expression hardened.

“Yurui,” she said, each syllable clipped, “to my office after school.”

She turned away before I could answer. I lowered my hand, and the gray pulp slid between my fingers and fell onto the floor.

By the time the final bell rang, the day had become nothing more but a long smear of sound and color. Students packed their bags. Chairs scraped. Conversations bloomed around me, bright and cheerful, and yet impossibly far away.

I remained seated as, one by one, everyone left. Eventually, even the hall outside quieted. I stood up and exited the now-empty classroom.

The sunset had turned the school golden. Normally white corridors now glowed orange, the shadows stretched long and thin across the floor. The lockers caught the light in dull, metallic strips. Even though the school was completely empty by now, in a way, it somewhat felt more alive than ever before.

My uniform was still damp in places. Cold patches clung to my back and shoulders. Every movement made the fabric rub against skin that felt too raw.

Miss Maevis’s office waited at the end of the hall. I stopped outside her door. My reflection stared back from the small dark window beside it: pale face, flat eyes, hair drying in stiff strands against my cheeks.

I lifted my hand and knocked.

“Come in,” her voice called from the other side.

I opened the door. Miss Maevis sat on the corner of her desk, a thick wooden ruler in one hand. My heart sank so hard it seemed to fall out of my body entirely.

The room smelled of paper, furniture polish, and old dust. The sunset slanted through the blinds in bright, narrow stripes, cutting across her face, across the ruler, across the empty chair in front of her desk.

For a moment, I returned to the bathroom. The sink. The water. Yashiro leaning over me.

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

I tried my best to push the memories out of my head. My stomach lurched, and I grabbed the edge of the doorframe to keep myself from vomiting.

Miss Maevis smiled faintly.

“Oh,” she said, looking at me deviously, “and don’t forget to close the door behind you.”

My hand shook as I reached back. The door clicked shut behind me. The sound was very small.

It felt final.

“No. I don't have it,” I murmur quietly while staring at the ground.

A tiny pause. Not for drama. For confirmation.

“Then the rest is noise.” Maevis folds her hands at her waist. “You can explain yourself after class. In my office.”

The word office hits me like cold water. For a moment, it feels like I’m right back there, reliving that day from weeks ago.

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